Quotes About Identity

The women were blank, shining areas with photographs of sad girls floating in them.

It was all right to be who he was, but others would probably think it was terrible. A couple of times in the past he'd reached this absolute zero of the truth, and without fear or bitterness he realized now that somewhere inside it there was a move he could make to change his life, to become another person, but he'd never be able to guess what it was.

It wasn't that she expected to be known by all the bank's employees; it was just that she had been lovely once, and had never really believed that time would make her faceless.

I'm telling you it's cold inside the body that is not the body, lonesome behind the face that is certainly not the face of the person one meant to become.

He didn't know what country he was in, but he was at home in the universe.

It was his foreignness, inability to make himself accepted, essential loserness, that made him look away.

I know everything." Heinz sputtered and fumed somewhat like an automobile himself, and said, "I'm God!" Grainier thought about how to answer. Here seemed a conversation that could go no farther.

Someday people are going to read about you in a story or a poem. Will you describe yourself for those people?' Oh, I don't know. I'm a fat piece of shit, I guess.

I know there are people who believe that wherever you look, all you see is yourself. Episodes like this make me wonder it they aren't right. Dirty Wedding

He thought he might as well. There's really only one question. What's that? Did God really kill Himself? Leanna wasn't smiling now. She was staring at him, but softly. Who are you? she asked him. Whatever she meant by the question, he didn't want to answer it. He wiped his face with his napkin, and in reference to the warmth of the place said, Man.

I was a whimpering dog inside, nothing more than that. I looked for work because people seemed to believe I should look for work, and when I found a job I believed I was happy about it because these same people – counselors and Narcotics Anonymous members and such – seemed to think a job was a happy thing.

It's my last year in the navy, he explained to the girl. I came across this ocean and died. They might as well bring back my bones. I'm all different.

We hadn't yet mentioned our names. We probably wouldn't. In barrooms I lived this over and over.

They ran a few syringesful into me, and I felt like I'd turned from a light, Styrofoam thing into a person. I held up my hands before my eyes. The hands were as still as a sculpture's.

It's not who you are that holds you back, it's who you think your not.

Your identity doesn't come from your address.

He was so tired of trying to convince other people he was worthy of their love. Tired of being forced on people who didn't even want him.

The Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner.

Queer theory is] the bastard child of the gay and lesbian movement and postmodern literary theory, which like other unwed mothers has been very loath to acknowledge the father.

Knowing where you come from is one thing, but it's suicide to stay there.

What molds us is what maims us.

Waking, after all, was an almost natal state. You surfaced without history, then spent the blinks and yawns reassembling your past, shuffling the shards into chronological order before fortifying yourself for the present.

Monsters don't dress like monsters; they dress like humans. Even stranger, they rarely know they're the monsters.

Angie was where most of me began and all of me ended.